CTDL 039: Cue the Mad Scientist laugh please

On a regular basis these days, I think of Frank Herbert’s, oft overlooked in the shadow of “Dune”, book “White Plague”. In it the protagonist’s family is killed by terrorists and he creates an engineered plague that is fatal to women, but only transmitted by men. Reading this article in the Washington Post I kept thinking that the technology discussed isn’t so far out there that somebody with a little money and a lot of skill couldn’t create a new form of life in the lab, and of course I’m pessimistic enough to expect it to be a disease that gets created.